Native Americans played important role in the history of the whaling industry

Saturday

Jul 5, 2014 at 12:01 AM

WESTPORT — The Westport Historical Society's collective thoughts recently turned to the sea, with a talk entitled, "Native American Whaling in Westport and Beyond" being presented as part of the society's ongoing lecture series.

JASON PROTAMI

WESTPORT — The Westport Historical Society's collective thoughts recently turned to the sea, with a talk entitled, "Native American Whaling in Westport and Beyond" being presented as part of the society's ongoing lecture series.

Promoting the release of her new book, "Living with the Whales: Documents and Oral Histories of Native New England," from University of Massachusetts Press, UConn Professor of History Nancy Shoemaker shared whaling tales with a capacity crowd at the Westport Free Public Library on June 19.

Though her book focuses on the major whaling ports throughout coastal New England and northern Long Island, Shoemaker found several instances of Native American whale men from Westport in her research. She told the local audience that there are many 18th and early 19th century whaling records available from commercially successful whaling centers like New Bedford.

Information about the time when natives and then colonists occasionally worked the coastal waters in small boats for pilot whales — or black fish as they were known — are more scarce, she acknowledged. A treasure... several 17th century accounts of beached whales and the local Wampanoag sachem's rights to them still survive, the professor said.

New Bedford wasn't the only colonial and 19th century town to send her men out to sea in those days. According to the author's research, there were about 30-40 active whaling ports throughout the south coast and islands area.

"Nantucket was the biggest at first, but New Bedford soon overtook them all, with more than 4,000 whaling voyages in its history," Shoemaker said. "Westport had closer to 300 trips, by way of comparison."

Length of voyage was another delineating factor, she said, with the 'city that lit the world' sending out bigger ships that traveled the world's oceans in voyages lasting three of four years. Westport's vessels were mainly Atlantic cruisers, putting out for only one to two years.

The Westport whalers regularly traded up and down the seaboard — buying and selling merchandise could be just as profitable as the whale oil for those Atlantic Coasters, the professor noted.

Of course oil wasn't the only precious commodity found in the whales — the baleen from right and hump-backed whales was almost as important, "being used in everything from corsets to riding whips... it was the plastic of its day," Shoemaker said.

Though her book research was primarily on Native Americans, the author did note another difference between small whaling ports like Westport and larger commercial centers like New Bedford — the nationality of their crews. The cities tended to have a more different nationalities like Africans, Azoreans and South Sea Islanders coming into port with their native sons; the Westport ships tended to have more locals in their crews.

Her perusal of hundreds of crew lists, log books, private journals and business records found some names still well known in Westport, with the Cuffe and Wainer families topping the list.

The son of a freed slave, Paul Cuffe married a native woman from Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard; her son Paul also married an Aquinnah native woman. Their son's memoirs were published in 1839, and still survive today.

The relationship between Aquinnah and Westport was much closer in the days when the sea was the area's major thoroughfare, the professor said. The family ties between the Cuffes and the Wainers was close too as another one of the Cuffe patriarch's sons was a brother-in-law to the Wainers, her research showed.

Finding Native Americans on crew lists wasn't that easy, she admitted, because lists were more concerned with a sailor skills than his nationality. Certificates of protection, a type of pre-photo descriptive passport, did contain skin tone descriptions, however.

Other than that, often all she had to go on were the names.

One name found in the log books, that of Amos Hastings of Mattapoisett, shows his career was typical of most Native American sailors. Though he eventually worked his way up to captain, Amos started whaling as a teen as a green deckhand.

He eventually became a rated officer, then the master of the ship Massasoit for two voyages. He died at sea.

Even though whaling was a dangerous business, death wasn't the norm for most sailors. Most whalemen retired in their 30s or 40s, Shoemaker said.

It is surprising how many native sailors became officers, she told her audience, they were known as superior harpooners which gave them a rank as officer and a bigger share in the profits, or lay as it was called.

Many Indians went to sea because it was the best job available to them, she said; only a handful like Paul Cuffe and Amos Hastings made captain and commanded their own ships.

On Captain Hastings' first voyage, 1851-2, his all-white crew deserted the ship, and he had to find local men to sail on, the records showed.

His second voyage in command, from 1852-3, with all native and African-American crew and officers, wasn't too successful either; they all became ill off the Cape Verde Islands and were laid up for a while.

Amos survived the sickness. After that cruise, he became a first mate again, and kept sailing, eventually dying at sea a few years later.